Microsoft’s Build 2018 loses its attention to Google I/O

Microsoft Build is an annual developer conference which started back in September 2011. Since then, Build has been very successful in getting the audience’ attention. Back in Build 2015, Microsoft was able to sell-out the conference with an hour. The fastest Build sell-out happened back in Build 2016 which was sold out within a minute!

Now for the first time in those 7 successful years, Microsoft’s Build conference hasn’t yet sold-out even after 2 weeks of registration. There are various reasons why Microsoft’s Build isn’t getting the attention this year.

The very first obvious reason could be Google I/O. Google I/O is Google’s developer conference that coincidentally overlaps with Microsoft’s Build 2018 conference. Google certainly has more media and developer interest as compared to Microsoft. And that could be because Windows’ failing native app platform – UWP.

Microsoft announced UWP with the launch of Windows 10 back in 2015. Since then, UWP was never really embraced by developers due to many reasons. One of the most discussed reason is Microsoft’s mobile failure. UWP failed because Windows 10 Mobile failed. If a developer had to write an app for desktops PCs, a Win32 app was a much powerful option instead of an inferior and less powerful UWP app. And since Windows Phone 8.1 devices were far more than Windows 10 Mobile devices, it also didn’t make any sense for developers to re-write a UWP app instead of the current Silverlight app, right from scratch. And as mobile development is now much more popular than desktop development, it makes sense for all developers to attend Google’s I/O conference for its most popular mobile platform – Android.

And after all this, Microsoft is still charging a lot more fee for the registration than Google’s I/O conference. And that brings us to the second big reason why Microsoft’s Build conference is still left unsold.

Microsoft Build’s registration fee is $2,495 which is more expensive than it has ever been. And on the other side, Google I/O’s registration fee is just $1,150 – almost half the price Build asks for. This alone might have stirred most of the audience towards Google’s I/O conference.

Microsoft somehow needs to figure out a way to get their developer community “pumped” and make Windows developer platform great again.